Despite losing two players to the NBA Draft, Illinois is expected to be better in 2025-2026.<\/p>\n
Numerous publications have Illinois in the top 25. Last season, they started the year unranked.<\/p>\n
Luckily for Illinois, they returned 42% of last season\u2019s scoring with Kylan Boswell, Tomislav Ivisic and Ben Humrichous.<\/p>\n
And head coach Brad Underwood reloaded with a ton of players from Eastern Europe. Zvonimir Ivisic, Mihailo Petrovic, David Mirkovic and Andrej Stojakovic.<\/p>\n
Illinois will be much older, after relying on 18-year-olds Kasparas Jakucionis and Will Riley last season.<\/p>\n
Bart Torvik Ranking: 8th<\/p>\n
Similar to Ken Pom, \u201cBart Torvik\u201d is an advanced metric rating. It computes simulations and analysis of offensive and defensive capabilities.<\/p>\n
The Illini sit high thanks to the 7th best offense and 15th best defense, according to the pre-season projection.<\/p>\n
Despite being 8th, Illinois isn\u2019t the site\u2019s highest ranked Big Ten team.<\/p>\n
The list includes No. 2 Purdue, No. 4 Michigan and No. 6 UCLA.<\/p>\n
ESPN Ranking: 17th<\/p>\n
Fox Sports Ranking: 20th<\/p>\n
CBS Sports: 23rd<\/p>\n
In media outlets, they\u2019re less high on Illinois, but this happens often.<\/p>\n
The Elite 8 team started the year unranked.<\/p>\n
Last season was unranked, but were a top-10 team according to advanced analytics for much of the season. And were considered a contender for the Final Four before a mid-season slide, started by injuries and illness.<\/p>\n
Underwood does best when he retains production from the previous season and is old.<\/p>\n
In 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, they won back to back Big Ten titles. They were led by 5th year players like Damonte Williams and Trent Frazier. And juniors Ayo Dosunmu and Kofi Cockburn.<\/p>\n
The Elite 8 team was led by returners Terrence Shannon, Luke Goode, Coleman Hawkins, Ty Rodgers and Dain Dainja. Adding in 5th year Marcus Domask didn\u2019t hurt either.<\/p>\n
While the style of play may be different, the overall idea of 2025-2026 is the same.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re very old, and nearly half last year\u2019s scoring is back from last year.<\/p>\n
In theory, Illinois should have a good year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite losing two players to the NBA Draft, Illinois is expected to be better in 2025-2026. Numerous publications…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[8786,7,7641,2050,8787,2048,8785,8784,1118],"class_list":{"0":"post-27435","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-advanced-analytics","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-big-ten","11":"tag-brad-underwood","12":"tag-elite-8","13":"tag-illinois","14":"tag-kylan-boswell","15":"tag-preseason-rankings","16":"tag-top-25"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114495298346344934","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}